You are a KEEPER or a SELLER?

I'm a seller. The good to decent gear, cables and ancillaries I have, I sell to help offset the cost of new purchases. Buy a new amp, sell the old one. Some power cords interconnects and cables I keep because you never know when you'll need an extra set. I like to keep my bank account at a certain amount and anytime I fall below it I start selling things I have laying around. Of course I have extra power cords (not expensive ones) interconnects (not expensive ones) a few gadgets, not expensive ones laying around. I have a pair of expensive Siemens Halske 6922's boxed up and I will sell those however.

I only have one system (the garage system doesn't count) but constantly go through different gear. Other than a few extra cables & tubes, I don't keep anything extra.

Tip for the extra cables: Get some storage size (1 gallon) Glad bags.

I'm a seller; my apartment is very small (450 sq. feet), and I don't have space to keep stuff around if I'm not using it. I also figure that the longer I keep stuff in the closet, the more value it loses, so I'm better off selling now than selling later.

Elizabeth, you left out one other category ... GIVER. For the most part, I'm a little of all three, but more toward SELLER if possible. If something has real market value ... meaning I can get roughly 50%-60% of new, then I sell it. Like Foster_9 said, I like to use the proceeds from the sale to fund new purchases. That way, every major component is in use in one of my three systems.

I also have a couple of extra PC's, and a few I/C's that I keep just in case. Most of my tubes are keepers just because if they're rare and good, it's the reason to have them; and if they're cheap and not-so-good nobody would buy them anyway!

But if something really doesn't have a solid market (even on EBay), I'll sometimes just give that away. Most of my old main system - CDP, receiver, speakers/cable, I/C's - is installed at my daughter's home. Recently I gave away my bedroom system - Denon, Oppo, Polk, Bluejeans I/C - to a friend to make room for tube integrated with digital wireless front end.

Have I sold or given away something and later regretted it? Yeah, but I get over it and life moves on. It holds down the clutter and makes for an interesting hobby.

With 5 amps, 4 speakers, 2 TT, 5 cartridges, box full of cables, and mountain of vibration tuning devices, I guess I qualified as a keeper?

But every so often I will be in selling mood and off load all the spare gears, but as long as Audiogon is up and running I still face the danger of buying something new to try and spare gears just sit at the corner and collect dusts soon after.